A citizen-led committee resubmitted a year-old report on school bus stop safety to the College Park City Council in January in an effort to encourage officials to make changes to protect elementary school children.
College Park’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC) in October 2024 recommended that the city upgrade safety at seven school bus stops that scored low on an evaluation of the city’s 75 waiting sites for elementary students.
Committee members told College Park Here & Now the city has not acted on any of the recommendations, which included adding bike lanes to narrow one road and installing a sidewalk for children who walk along another.
“I personally feel that is an outrage and there has been very little movement and very little progress,” Donald Hays, the chairman of the BPAC subcommittee that produced the report, said of the committee’s request for a sidewalk at the bus stop at St. Andrews Place and Duke Street. “That area continues to be the most dangerous place for elementary school children to wait for their bus that could be fixed tomorrow.”
The report included safety evaluations for 75 elementary school bus stops across 59 intersections within the city’s limits. Each bus stop was graded on a 100-point scale based on safety criteria from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The report included safety recommendations for seven bus stops with scores lower than 75%.
The subcommittee’s most substantial requests were for a sidewalk at St. Andrews Place, bike lanes on Edgewood Road and 49th Avenue, and the relocation of the bus stop at 47th Avenue and Cherry Hill Road to 47th Avenue and Kiernan Road.
Three of the remaining four bus stops flagged in the report are on Metzerott Road, which is maintained by Prince George’s County. The report asks the city to recommend safety upgrades to the county. In addition, the report cited “safety concerns” for a fourth bus stop on Route 1, a state road, but noted the subcommittee did not have a specific solution that would prevent children from having to wait for their bus in a driveway next to The Jerk Pit.
To come up with recommendations, Hays said, “We used a combination of different images from around the internet. We would place ourselves like we were a child on that map and drag the photo around.”
Subcommittee members moved the photos around the bus stop images, looking for sidewalks, nearby highways and other safety features and hazards, according to Hays.
“Once we had looked at all the bus stops and we had identified the most dangerous ones,” Hays said, “we did more boots-on-the-ground work to make sure that our recommendations were based in reality.”
Hays said District 1 Councilmembers Jacob Hernandez and Alan Hew are supportive of adding bike lanes on Edgewood Road. But in District 4, he said, “we have councilmembers who are actively opposing [the building of a sidewalk at St. Andrews Place] because people [from the neighborhoods there] don’t like the idea of sidewalks.”
Mark Shroder, the chair of BPAC, said many residents do not want sidewalks on their property.
“Everybody’s in favor of bicycle and pedestrian safety in general, but you may not be in favor of it right in front of your property,” Shroder said. “There were people who found the idea of sidewalks on their property inconvenient.”
Hays said the bus stop at St. Andrews Place and Duke Street remains the most dangerous location identified in the report, and homeowner opposition has stalled changes there.
“No one is more vulnerable than children,” Hays said. “They cannot vote. Often they cannot speak for themselves because they don’t understand the political system. How do we actually, truly protect the most vulnerable people in our city?”